Dennis Nemes is excited about his new job at Central Catholic

Nemes spent the 2011-12 school year in retirement after serving as the principal at Northwestern Lehigh for 29 years. In New Tripoli, Nemes always handled himself with class whether it was overseeing his school or serving on the District 11 athletic committee.

Nemes considered a foray into politics and was briefly a candidate for state representative in the 134th legislative district.

But this is someone who belongs in education and now he's back -- as the new principal of Central Catholic.

Nemes called me last weekend while I was covering NASCAR at Pocono Raceway and was excited about the news. He's happy to be back and he's happy to be at a great place like CCHS where he will work with legendary girls basketball coach Mike Kopp and new boys basketball coach Dennis Csensits.

He will do well at Central Catholic. He has great respect for the school's educational program, its extremely high academic standards, and, of course, its proud athletic heritage.

Having had a public school background, Nemes will be able to offer a different perspective, a different voice and viewpoint to a major private school like Central Catholic.

I don't know if he will remain on the District 11 committee, but his service and commitment to the high school sports scene is unquestioned and his experience greatly valued.

I think he could offer a lot with the ongoing mess that is high school transfers, which are not supposed to be for athletic reasons, but are in almost every case.

These transfers -- and again there are as many private to public schools as there are public to private -- have once again put a dark cloud over the start of a high school sports season. It's Topic 1A among coaches.

The transferring is more rampant than ever because parents now know it's extremely difficult for these moves to be blocked. If District 11 blocks a transfer, the PIAA often re-opens the door.

It's nauseating.

Nemes can't solve the problem, but his perspective and experience on that matter, and so many others, make him a good choice at Central Catholic. I look forward to seeing him in his new role.

Current Comments

Dennis is a class guy. He is a great educator and gentlemen.He will serve CCHS with integity,honor and committment to the students,parents,staff and community.I wish him much success.

Posted By: Ray O'Connell | Aug 11, 2012 12:58:49 PM

this was a great blog post up until you decided to take a nice little shot at central and their "recruits." Of course, that is par for the course whenever you talk about central...

Posted By: viking | Aug 11, 2012 5:19:24 PM

Viking: A bit paranoid aren't we? Nowhere in the post did I say anything about Central Catholic "recruits." I have noted the problem of athletic transfers to all schools -- private to public as well as public to private. No individual schools were mentioned. Nemes can offer CCHS or any school a lot of expertise having served on the District 11 committee and having dealt with the issue of transfers for many years.

Posted By: Keith Groller | Aug 11, 2012 7:13:40 PM

groller you're right...you didn't mention "recruits"...but why even bring it up in the first place...if you were writing about Parkland's new principal you wouldn't bring it up...apparently your boys over ther are little too important to the paper...which by the way most people who follow sports in the lehi valley realize....take a look at your hoops columns from last year...by the end of the season every time you wrote about ACC you had to mention "if the team stays together"....you never mentioned that about any other team...any public school team that is...face your bias....everyone else has....

I think Mr. Groller said it best about the PIAA re-opening transfer "cases" previously ruled-on by the PIAA. I can safely say that the situation at Pius X (with the former QB leaving) thankfully was not a LV issue in the end. And to be fair, CCHS has gotten a lot of accusations regarding transfers since I was in grade school. But, if Central is not alone. Becahi has one of the more interesting situations with their current wrestling team. Aside from having "a sudden skin infection outbreak" which prevented them from wrestling Easton...they were fit as fiddles days later and went on to win the AA State Team Title in Hershey. Anyone can count the "new faces" in their line-up and it's all too obvious how head Beca Coach Jeff Karam (a nice guy in his own right) feel about his "team" as he WAS NOT voted D11 Coach of the year. Hmmmmm. Sounds like the rest of the district coaches are sending a message to the parochial schools.

Posted By: Elitist Weaver Camper | Aug 13, 2012 6:56:56 PM

Nice tip of the hat to the new CCHS principal, but not sure why the article turned into a "transfer issue" blog. Maybe next time you write a blog about Liberty, Freedom or a few other public schools you may want to talk transfers. That is where the center of transfer activity is these days. Odd that you chose to link the issue to CCHS. As for Parkland, it's been obvious for some time that the MC and staff are huge supporters and linking transfers or anything else with a negative connotation toward Parkland will never happen.